The Failed Drug War Has Created a Human Rights Nightmare

[upstatecajun]

How Can This Happen in Our Country and Go Virtually Undiscussed?
If we fail to commit ourselves to ending mass incarceration, future generations will judge us harshly.

So much about our racial reality today is little more than a mirage. The promised land of racial equality wavers, quivers just out of our reach in the barren desert of our new, "colorblind" political landscape. It looks so good from a distance: Barack Obama, our nation's first black president, standing in the Rose Garden behind a podium looking handsome, dignified, and in charge. Flip the channel and there's Michelle Obama, a brown-skinned woman, digging a garden in the backyard of the White House -- not as a servant or a maid -- but as the first lady, schooling the nation on better health and the need to be good stewards of our planet. Flip the channel again and there's the whole Obama family exiting Air Force One, waving to the crowd, descending the flight of stairs -- a gorgeous black family living in the White House, ruling America, cheered by the world.

Drive a few blocks from the White House and you find the Other America. You find you're still in the desert, dying of thirst, wondering what wrong turn was made, and how you managed to miss the promised land, though you reached for it with all your might.

A vast new racial undercaste now exists in America, though their plight is rarely mentioned on the evening news. Obama won't mention it; the Tea Party won't mention it; media pundits would rather talk about anything else. The members of the undercaste are largely invisible to those of us who have jobs, live in decent neighborhoods, and zoom around on freeways, passing by the virtual and literal prisons in which they live.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/150785/the_failed_drug_war_has_created_a_human_rights_nightmare_--_how_can_this_happen_in_our_country_and_go_virtually_undiscussed/

[FiveGoodMen]

1. And so few even question it

[ThomCat]

2. And yet, even here at DU many people will tell you

and some have even posted and stated as supposed fact that charges of racism and worries about racism are mostly exaggerated, that it would be difficult to find blatant racism these days because we as a society have made so much progress.

Anyone who considers our criminal justice system with even the most cursory attention and doesn't immediately see blatant racism in grand institutional form clearly has no idea what they are really seeing, or how to see it.

Racism is also obvious in our education system. For decades there were attempts to get away from standardized tests because of research that continually proved that standardized tests had measurable, provable biases that favored certain classes of students based on their economic background and racial and ethnic background. White, judeo-christian, upper-middle class students performed better because the the tests, to some extent, measured aspects of being part of these groups rather than intelligence or academic progress.

But now, in a tragic reversal, all schools everywhere are required to use these tests, and make the entire academic experience revolve around these tests as if they are absolute and unassailable. Worse, the schools are still being funded with local property taxes so that schools in poor minority neighborhoods still start at a distinct disadvantage, and efforts to address and correct this kind of imbalance are no longer in fashion. Let the students suffer if they aren't smart enough to overcome the imbalance on their own. Built in Racism in Education is apparently acceptable.

Racism is obvious in many other places in our society if people simply open up our eyes and look. But how many people honestly look if they aren't personally at risk of being on the losing end of that racism? How many white people really care enough to look and see the depth and frequency of racism throughout our society?

If most white people truly understood how pervasive racism really is, and had to live with it in their own lives, even for a single year of their lives, that would be enough to cause a revolution in our society. Every major institution would have to come crumbling down, needing to be rebuilt again with everyone's input to make sure it was fair and honest and accessible this time.

Every institution should have to come crumbling down and be rebuilt. Fairness, honesty and accessibility for everyone shouldn't be too much to ask. These should be rights that all of us can expect.

It's an ongoing tragedy that so many people in our society have never been able to claim these rights, and probably never will be able to.

[RainDog]

3. excellent n/t

[crickets]

4. +1000000

[Blue Owl]

5. K&R

The war on some drugs.

[Warren DeMontague]

6. End the drug war. Legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana. Treatment on demand for other drugs.

Stop treating addiction like a law enforcement issue, treat it as a public health issue.

It's well past time.